As the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) meets in Hawaii (IETF 91), the unavoidable question for both participants and observers is whether a Standards Development Organization (SDO) like the IETF is relevant in a rapidly expanding environment of Open Source Software (OSS) projects.

For those new to the conversation, the open question is NOT whether SDOs should exist. They are a political reality inexorably tied to trade policies and international relationships. The fundamental reason behind their existence is to avoid a communications Tower of Babel (with the resulting economic consequences) and establish governance over the use of global commercial and information infrastructure (not just acceptable behavior, but the management of resources like addressing as well). Rather, the question is about their role going forward in enabling innovation.

Over the past several years, I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of two important trends in the networking industry – the evolution of open standards and open APIs, and the definition of policy as the key interface to the network.

Open is an extremely important word to the future of networking. The simple dictionary definition for open means not closed or locked, allowing access to inside, and freely accessible.

The ultimate networking environment will allow a user the freedom to connect anything together in the cloud and to an existing environment. In order for this vision to happen, companies must work together to create a common language.

OpenStack has garnered a lot of interest in the development community and among our customers. We at Cisco have been actively helping to shape the discussion around policy. Working collaboratively with our partners and competitors, we helped create Group-Based Policy (GBP), an intent-driven policy API for OpenStack.

The Group-Based Policy initiative represents a significant innovation in how users conceive, manage, deploy, and scale their applications in OpenStack clouds. And its now available as a 100% open source solution available to any vendor. When coupled with Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure, we are able to offer our customers a completely policy-driven network.

March is a rather event-laden month for Open Source and Open Standards in networking: the 89th IETF, EclipseCon 2014, RSA 2014, the Open Networking Summit, the IEEE International Conference on Cloud (where I’ll be talking about the role of Open Source as we morph the Cloud down to Fog computing) and my favorite, the one and only Open Source Think Tank where this year we dive into the not-so-small world (there is plenty of room at the bottom!) of machine-to-machine (m2m) and Open Source, that some call the Internet of Everything.

There is a lot more to March Madness, of course, in the case of Open Source, a good time to celebrate the 1st anniversary of “Meet Me on the Equinox“, the fleeting moment where daylight conquered the night the day that project Daylight became Open Daylight. As I reflect on how quickly it started and grew from the hearts and minds of folks more interested in writing code than talking about standards, I think about how much the Network, previously dominated, as it should, by Open Standards, is now beginning to run with Open Source, as it should. We captured that dialog with our partners and friends at the Linux Foundation in this webcast I hope you’ll enjoy. I hope you’ll join us in this month in one of these neat places.

As Open Source has become dominant in just about everything, Virtualization, Cloud, Mobility, Security, Social Networking, Big Data, the Internet of Things, the Internet of Everything, you name it, we get asked how do we get the balance right? How does one work with the rigidity of Open Standards and the fluidity of Open Source, particularly in the Network? There is only one answer, think of it as the Yang of Open Standards, the Yin of Open Source, they need each other, they can not function without the other, particularly in the Network. Open Source is just the other side, the wild side!

Guest Blog by the President and CEO of the American National Standards Institute, S. Joe Bhatia: learn directly from the American National Standards Institute about the importance of standards, how their adoption and promotion can help organizations innovate in a global market, while lowering costs and gaining competitive advantage

Author Bio: S. Joe Bhatia, president and CEO of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), has more than 30 years of leadership experience in global business operations covering engineering, governmental and congressional liaisons, external affairs, and standardization and conformance, and is a frequent lecturer in the U.S. and around the world on topics such as international trade, technical developments, commercial market access, and health, safety and environmental concerns.

As U.S. business and government leaders seek concrete solutions for job growth and global competitiveness, there is an incredibly powerful tool at hand that is sometimes overlooked. This tool can help U.S. industry tap into new and expanding technologies. It can help businesses out-innovate competitors in the global market. And it can help you cut costs and boost your bottom line.

I’m talking about standardization – and there has never been a more crucial time for American businesses to leverage standards and conformance to gain a powerful advantage.

Standardization not only informs the direction of innovation, it impacts the strength of the American workforce. Standards have the potential to accelerate the idea-to-market cycle, increase the number of U.S. products and services in markets worldwide, and save companies millions of dollars.

In short, standards have the power to turbo-charge innovation and fuel business growth.

But to gain the greatest advantage, you have to get informed, and – better yet – get involved. That’s why the U.S. standardization community has worked together to develop the Standards Boost Business outreach initiative. The goal is to help business leaders understand the strategic and economic value of standards – both to your company, and to our overall national competitiveness. Read More »

Join me and my good friends Dan Frye and Jim Zemlin, Tuesday June 18th at 8:30 am Pacific, in a webcast as we discuss open source, networking, communities and projects, the opportunities entailed, the win-win-win model (or win-cube model as I like to call it, for the Authors, for the Community and for the Enterprise), and the recently announced Open Daylight project hosted by the Linux Foundation. Thank you, Shashi Kiran, for organizing a wonderful event and opportunity to talk about one of my favorite subjects, Open at Cisco.

Some of the individuals posting to this site, including the moderators, work for Cisco Systems. Opinions expressed here and in any corresponding comments are the personal opinions of the original authors, not of Cisco. The content is provided for informational purposes only and is not meant to be an endorsement or representation by Cisco or any other party. This site is available to the public. No information you consider confidential should be posted to this site. By posting you agree to be solely responsible for the content of all information you contribute, link to, or otherwise upload to the Website and release Cisco from any liability related to your use of the Website. You also grant to Cisco a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free and fully-paid, transferable (including rights to sublicense) right to exercise all copyright, publicity, and moral rights with respect to any original content you provide. The comments are moderated. Comments will appear as soon as they are approved by the moderator.